Where does God love to be…

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

C.S. Lewis

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(Girolamo dai Libri / God the Father / 1555)

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings,
but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people.
God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him;
rather, his way is beyond all comprehension,
free and self-determined beyond all proof.
Where reason is indignant,
where our nature rebels,
where our piety anxiously keeps us away:
that is precisely where God loves to be.
There he confounds the reason of the reasonable;
there he aggravates our nature,
our piety—that is where he wants to be,
and no one can keep him from it.
Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and
so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair,
that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.
And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…
God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in.
He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them.
God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly,
the excluded, the weak and broken.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

focus

“Nor did demons crucify Him; it is you who have crucified Him and crucify Him still, when you delight in your vices and sins. ”
― Francis of Assisi

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(statue in a yard in San Antonio, Texas / Julie Cook / 2014)

We threw caution to the wind
Living for the moment

Self centered, selfish, self
Focusing inward, never outward

As the hammer hit the nail

They did it
That was our familiar cry
It was all them, certainly not me
We claimed none of that

Again a hammer hits another nail

Blood poured out upon our hands
yet there was no acknowledgement
How could that be
Self becoming blood

Another nail is struck

Blood mixes with sin
Flowing down a tree
Spreading out over the dirt
I pick up the linen

Blood covers my hands
It doesn’t wipe off

Lightning streaks across the blackened sky
Was it the thunder which shook the ground
The bitter taste of bile swirls through a dry mouth
I didn’t do this, I swear

The women cry as the people turn away
Three times a rooster crows
There’s another one dead
As the body twists on the noose

The demons in hell are dancing
For once, this was not their doing

Hands still stained
Metal striking metal
There’s money on the ground
Was it just a dream?

Needing to hide,
We run to the shadows
Still claiming none of it
It’s all too much to ignore

Voices cry out
I hear my name
Clean hands reach for the blood soaked hands I hide

Eyes meet mine
Guilt is freely taken
Brokeness made straight
The demons dance no more

Shadows never lie
As Light now breaks the darkness
Battles rage no more
with Victory now at hand

We step out from the grave
The Price is paid in full
Death has lost again
Triumphantly Hope remains alive